With both senior teams heading out to Antwerp, Belgium next month, the excitement builds for one of the biggest tournaments of the year. The EuroHockey Championships have always been an exciting and tough competition for England and both teams will be looking for a good result.

With the England Women’s squad going from strength to strength with the addition of some exciting and ever-improving young players, and finished second in the recent Investec World League, qualifying for the World Cup 2014 in the process. Captain Kate Walsh says she’s “fed up with bronze” so will, no doubt, be looking for a high finish.

The England Men’s squad also qualified for the World Cup after their World League performance in Malaysia and performed well with some high-scoring draws in a recent series with the highly-rated Netherlands team. With some very tough competition in teams like the Netherlands and Olympic winners Germany, the men could be harder pushed for a medal finish than the women. However following the matches with the Netherlands, coach Bobby Crutchley commented “once again we’ve plenty to be really pleased about, our general play and control in the game has been good, and we were a threat going forward which is something we’ve worked hard on.”

BBC Sport has secured rights to the EuroHockey Nations Championship, which is an exciting development for the visibility of hockey in the UK. From 17 August, the BBC will air all games on iPlayer, the red button or online, bringing the audience more hockey than ever before.

Eurohockey – what you need to know

DATES: 17-25 August
VENUE: Boom, Antwerp

Eight teams divided into two pools of four, split according to their world ranking.
Each team will play against the other sides in their pool, with points awarded as follows: 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss.
Teams on equal points during the pool phase will be ranked according to who won the most matches. If two sides have equal points and won an equal number of matches, teams will be ranked according to their respective goal differences.
Pools: